Paper short abstract:

The House of Slaves is a memorial to the slave trade. Commemorations of the slave trade recall its horrors, but also speak to the potential of repair in our post-slavery era. Using the fabric of the House of Slaves, impersonators who embody local forms of racialization enact racial reconciliation.

Paper long abstract:

In recent decades, the commemoration of slavery has taken on a global reach. The long-awaited recognition for the horrors of slavery seems now achieved in a formal sense – although the consequences of the slave trade and the traumas it has generated are still part of our present. Whilst claims for reparation payments are debated, racial reconciliation remains yet to be achieved.

This paper looks at the temporalities, materialities, and performativities of repair in the House of Slaves in Senegal. The House of Slaves is a museum that was established under French colonial rule, but gained its global significance due to curator Boubacar Joseph Ndiaye, resulting in its inscription as UNESCO World Heritage site in 1978. The House of Slaves was originally built in the 18th century at the height of the slave trade. Its owner belonged to a class of mixed-race women who were implicated in the slave trade and funded their luxurious lifestyles with their profits from it. Today, the historical inhabitants of the island are invoked by impersonators who are asked to perform at commemorative events.

This paper focuses on the embodied performances of these impersonators to visualize and enact racial reconciliation in a museum setting. Extending the performativity of impersonators to wider political discourses on mixed-race, the paper explores to what extent re-enactments of the past contribute to racial repair.